Shekhar

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by S H Vatsyayan


  Should he make dinner now? He wasn’t that hungry. No, he was hungry, but it wasn’t right to let hunger have so much control over him. He straightened his bed and wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to sleep. He was shivering so hard that he couldn’t get warm. So he got up and began quickly pacing in his room to warm himself up.

  Suddenly, his feelings of total failure in all of his efforts, which he had repressed after last talking with Shashi, welled up inside him. The failure not only of his efforts but also of all efforts . . . What was to be gained by setting foot in the bubbling swamp of life after all—? No matter how you entered, you would sink into it . . . I will write a book—a book, ha! As if no one had written a book until now. As if no one had tried to reform society until now. As if—

  Shekhar began walking even faster. Was there no release from this deadly circle of cause and effect? Couldn’t one escape it?

  A thought rose like a bubble from the chasm of his emotional torment—he hadn’t ever believed in something so deeply that he was willing to sacrifice himself completely for it—not even for a moment had Shekhar been able to erase from his mind the idea that he was Shekhar. Was it only a matter of time? Was it really not his fault? Hadn’t he been hoarding himself like a miser, even though he dreamed of turning the world upside down so that he could converse with it! Forget about everyone else, but so many women had come into his life, and he had been unable to get very close to any of them. He had kept himself from living! Manika’s way of life was much better than his—she had the audacity to throw life around like dust! ‘My life’s candle burns at both ends! It won’t burn all night long, but my friends and my enemies, how beautiful is its light!’ Did he have the ability to illuminate the heavens with that kind of light? Manika hadn’t chosen the right path, but she had the real substance in her that the gods hide away from humans . . .

  He remembered a saying he had read in a book that Manika had given him—‘What is abstinence? It is the miscarriage of the strongest lust!’ Then he remembered a story about a Pathan—he couldn’t remember where he had heard it, perhaps it was in jail—a moulvi was explaining to a Pathan why he should be celibate (abstinent),4 but the Pathan didn’t understand that word. The moulvi began to explain that a celibate man kept his eyes down, didn’t chase after women or go with women. Suddenly the Pathan interrupted to say, ‘Oh, now I understand—in our language we call him a eunuch.’

  Shekhar stopped. He felt that there was certainly something wrong with the direction that his thoughts were streaming. As with all thoughts, this one had some partial truth in it, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Absolutely not. Because when had his circumstances ever handed him any advantages, what big opportunity had he ever let slip through his fingers? Even if no extraordinary obstacle had ever fallen in his path, still some . . . The life of others, too, was a mixture of advantages and obstacles . . .

  Was it only that he was hungry right now? Were all rebellions here clouds of unsatisfied desires? Would these desires keep building until there was an explosion and then nothing?

  Then all of this—is hysteria!5

  He could tell that his energies were being directed internally and would gradually destroy him unless there was a radical revolution which turned them outwards, externally . . . And it needed to happen, because only an extroverted force could produce a revolution, not an introverted one. Even if his introversion made him into a special kind of poet, it would completely obliterate everything that he wanted to accomplish . . .

  Shekhar sat down on his bed and wrapped himself in his blanket. In a vague way, he wanted not merely to write but to do some other work that might bring him into contact with other people, but what kind and how, he couldn’t figure out. He lay down after having resolved to ask Shashi for her advice.

  With the first light of day Shekhar got a telegram stating that his mother had passed away.

  Shekhar had got up with a strange feeling of exhaustion. Even after he read the telegram, the feeling didn’t dissipate; he couldn’t make sense of what he had just read. He put the telegram down and picked up his toothbrush and towel and went to the faucet to clean himself up. Then he came back inside and went and took some papers from the cabinet. Suddenly the four words of the telegram flashed in his brain like lightning—Mother has passed away!

  A strange feeling of anguish came over him, which was different from sorrow. He didn’t feel sorrow, and he felt a little ashamed at himself because of that . . . But he wanted to cry just once—to cry simply like an ordinary man who had lost his mother! But his eyes were drying out, with a burning sensation.

  Shekhar stared blankly at the papers and sat there for a long time. Slowly, many memories of his childhood passed before him—but there was not a single element of emotion in those memories, as if his emotional capacity had degenerated and only his vision was working. After a while he realized that these images had finished spinning around and were finally focusing on a single point—Shekhar was eating dinner, and from the adjoining room Mother’s voice says, ‘I don’t have any faith in this one.’ But there was no residue of that terrible anger which had been previously tied to that image . . . Why? Had he forgiven his mother? He didn’t recall ever having come to that decision deliberately. Perhaps he had unconsciously realized that it was stupid to hoard his anger, or perhaps he had just now decided that it was a sin to think ill of the dead. He had tried to imagine a picture of his mother’s face before, but he was usually unsuccessful. But today he could see it clearly—it wasn’t a beautiful face, but there weren’t those lines across her face that he usually saw, even though he knew that they weren’t always there—the face was peaceful, and there was nothing in it that would contradict its relationship to motherhood . . . All mothers have their own faces, but motherhood has its own special countenance—or rather, it should have . . .

  But why couldn’t Shekhar cry?

  His mind went completely blank asking himself this question. After a while, he got up all of a sudden so that if nothing else he would at least do his daily chores. He cleaned his room, washed and put away his dishes, fixed his bed. And then he took one look at the bare walls of his room. Had there been a picture on any of his walls—he hated hanging photographs—but at that moment if he had a photograph of his mother, he might have hung it on the wall and tried to know that face anew, that face which had become so unfamiliar . . .

  For no reason, he thought of Shanti—wearing that expression of hers and looking like a picture by Rossetti—‘The Glory of Death’6 . . . Was death always glorious . . . ? Now Mother is no more—

  He remembered, too, the poem that Shanti had recited to him, but it didn’t hold any meaning for him right now, and so his mind went to a different poem by Tennyson:

  The sounds of the twilight and evening bells

  And a clear call to me;

  Let there be no sadness of farewell then,

  When I lift my anchor and set out for the open sea7

  . . . They say that this was Tennyson’s last poem, written when he was eighty-two . . .

  For no apparent reason, Shekhar went out to the bank of the Ravi River that afternoon. He had never seen a crematorium, and he knew that if he didn’t see the final rites of a body he would never understand the reality of death.

  A few bodies were burning in the cremation grounds. They had been burning for a while. The bodies inside the pyres were unrecognizable and no one else was there. Shekhar was alone if one didn’t count a few dogs . . .

  But glorious? Shekhar thought the scene was closer to ridiculous—what a vulgar end! He believed that fire could give anything a nobility and a majesty, but there was none of that here. Rather, from the surroundings here, fire itself had become cheapened. Bitterly, Shekhar wondered if perhaps people alleviated their grief by joining the fate of their ancestors to this cheap place . . .

  It was evening by the time he got back. Inside, he realized the oil had run out in his lamp. It was for just such an event that he had pur
chased a few candles; he lit two of them at the same time, placed them on the shelf and sat on his cot.

  All of a sudden, the light from the candles flickered, and then after a teer-teer-teer sound they came back to light. Shekhar saw the moth, bigger than a butterfly, which had often circled the lamp, now burned after having clashed with the flame of the candle.

  Suddenly, an image of life as mere existence flashed before him; existence, which is a mere event . . . Had the lamp been lit today, the moth would have still been circling it—but because of an event, of the lack of oil—‘teer-teer-teer’—and—nirvana!

  The news from that morning’s telegram flashed before his eyes. Mother is no more!

  Shekhar got up and kneeled in front of the shelf as if in a pose of prayer and, placing his forehead against the shelf, began to cry, first dry-eyed, and then with a sobbing that shook his entire frame and then slowly with tears . . .

  He still hadn’t stopped crying when suddenly from behind him, Shashi’s pain-filled voice said, ‘Shekhar?’ He lifted his head with a start. Shashi said, softly, ‘So you’ve heard the news.’ He nodded. Then he wiped his eyes with his fingers and stood up. Shashi went over and placed her hands on his shoulders and gently manoeuvred him to his cot. She still didn’t move; she gently caressed his shoulders with one hand, in a soft, comforting touch.

  Shekhar thought that if she kept on, his embarrassment from crying would dissipate and he would burst into tears again. He said, ‘I want to be alone for a while—’

  ‘Then I’ll leave you alone—’

  ‘No, you should sit. I’ll be back.’ And without giving Shashi a chance to say anything, he went out.

  Shekhar came back after about an hour. Shashi was sitting worried on the edge of his cot. When he arrived, she said, ‘Now I should go—it’s late. I just got word this evening, so I came right over to see you. Take care, my brother! I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  Shashi left but Shekhar kept looking at the stairs for a while . . . Then he noticed that there was a light coming from the smaller closet. He took a candle from the room and went over to look. He was surprised to see a covered plate had been left there.

  In Shekhar’s absence, Shashi had made some gram flour cakes and put out some pickle and honey next to it—what else was there in his house!

  Shekhar didn’t want to eat. But when he looked at the plate, he felt he wasn’t free to make up his own mind in the matter.

  *

  Shashi came back once more, and two days later, she came again with Rameshwar. Christmas vacation was starting that day, and Shashi and Rameshwar were leaving town. Without prodding, Rameshwar offered, ‘I keep saying to her that she should stay here, but she won’t hear of it. I thought that if she stayed here, it might help you feel better—being alone in a time of sadness makes it worse.’

  Shekhar said, ‘No, it’s not a problem. I’m only used to living alone.’

  As they were leaving, Shashi said, ‘If you had gone home once it would have been good. You should go and see your father.’

  Ambivalently, Shekhar remained quiet.

  A week later, he received word from his father that he was coming. His father planned to go to Haridwar, and pass through Lahore on his way back home. He was there four days later. Shekhar went to get him at the train station. Seeing the deep lines of exhaustion, sadness and hurt on his father’s face, Shekhar was stunned. He had never before imagined that that mature, unselfconscious face could ever look aged, but now his face and eyes were clearly afflicted with the kind of fatigue that gradually manifests after passing several milestones on the difficult road of life.

  Before he had followed him up to his room, his father asked once at the stairs, ‘What kind of neighbourhood have you chosen to live in?’ He had the luggage on one side and then saw the tonga-wallah off. Then his father asked him, ‘Is this where you live?’

  The question was unnecessary, but it was said to make clear the note of disbelief it contained. Shekhar said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Are there any servants?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What do you do for food?’

  ‘Once a day I get a meal from the restaurant.’

  ‘And the other times?’

  Shekhar was silent.

  His father said while thinking it over, ‘You probably make something tip-top8 yourself.’

  The question made room for the possibility that there need not be an answer. Shekhar didn’t want to lie, but he also didn’t want to tell the truth.

  ‘And the cleaning—the dishes?’

  ‘It’s a small room. It doesn’t take long to clean up.’

  After a period of silence, his father spoke again, ‘Aren’t you embarrassed living like this?’ His voice wasn’t full of anger as much as wounded pride.

  Shekhar kept his mouth shut.

  His father began pacing in the room. Shekhar began running around to make the necessary arrangements—he took things out from the closet, borrowed a bucket from a neighbour and placed it in the room after filling it with water, placed his father’s attaché case on the shelf and hung his dhoti and towel from the window. His father hectored only once, ‘Leave it be. I’ll do it myself.’ But when Shekhar kept doing what he was doing, his father watched silently.

  When his father was leaving to take a bath, Shekhar said, ‘I’ll go to the restaurant and be back—’

  ‘All right. And get my medicine from the store, too.’

  His father told him the name of the store and gave him two ten-rupee notes. Shekhar asked him, ‘How much does it cost?’

  ‘That should cover it. And buy a box of biscuits, too—to have with evening tea—I don’t like plain tea very much.’

  When Shekhar purchased the medicine and the bill was one rupee and some change, he suspected that there was another reason that his father had given him twenty rupees. When he went back, his father had finished bathing and was writing something in his notebook. Shekhar put the medicine down in front of him and began counting out the remaining rupees.

  His father said, ‘Keep it for now—I will need more things—’ Shekhar’s suspicions were confirmed.

  Dinner arrived a little bit later. Every other day, the boy would drop the food off and leave and come back later to get the dishes. But today, Shekhar stopped him to ask him to do something.

  His father looked at each item on the plate carefully, ate five or six bites and then pushed the plate away.

  Shekhar had never spoken of such things with his father before, and moreover he always felt it strange to hear other people talk of such things, but today partly because he felt somehow responsible and partly because he could tell that his father couldn’t terrorize him as he had before, Shekhar steeled himself and said, ‘But you didn’t eat anything—’

  His father answered in an uncharacteristic fashion, ‘What’s the point of eating now?—My interest in food went with her—’ and he immediately got up. Shekhar was silent. He also pushed his plate away and gestured to the boy to bring some water so that they could wash up . . .

  Nothing much happened in the next few days; occasionally something would happen to remind his father of Shekhar’s mother and the atmosphere would become heavy with sadness and dejection, but then a little while later things would go on as before. At first, Shekhar and his father didn’t chit-chat much, and when it did happen it would be one-sided; but now Shekhar was noticing a change in his father and began to feel a little more like his equal, and because of that the ratio of chit to chat in their chit-chats became more even, although it still wasn’t entirely equal; the conversations would start abruptly and suddenly break off in the middle . . .

  ‘How long will you live like this?’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘Aren’t you going to do anything? What will come of eating restaurant food all day? Is this any way to live?’

  ‘I am doing something. Actually, I’ve never worked as hard as I am—’

  Full of disbelief—‘Maybe you
are, but what good is hard work without a purpose? Do you think anything comes of sheer effort? Life needs a plan to make effort meaningful. The first thing that you need is to live properly—all you’ve done is spread out your wares like a gypsy!’

  ‘I have my plan right in front of me. It’s fine if you don’t approve of it, but all of my hard work has a purpose.’

  ‘What plan? You’ve given up your education. Why don’t you keep studying? At least get your MA. If you work hard, you’ll even pass with high marks—you’ll even get a scholarship.9 Or if you don’t want to study here, you can go to England.’

  ‘I don’t have any interest in studying. What will an MA accomplish—everyone has an MA these days, and not all of them are undeserving. I’m not anything special.’

  ‘Don’t get an MA if you don’t want to; pick something else to pursue. Didn’t you once talk about becoming a lawyer or an engineer? These professions can be of use in social reform work—Or if you are really bent on doing social service, you can try education. Service is not a bad thing—’

  ‘I have come to think that those sorts of things speak to the ideals of other people, not my own. And if your heart isn’t in something, all of your hard work goes to waste.’

  ‘So you must have some ideas—’

  ‘I’ve picked literature.’

  ‘Picked! What will literature accomplish? Life doesn’t run on literature! And you can do literature at the same time as other things; can’t doctors or lawyers or engineers be writers? Every writer I read in Hindi has a “Professor” in front of his name. These people must all be teachers somewhere. It’s good work, it’s also service, and there’s some stability in life, and there’s literature, too. That’s the best of everything. And—’

 

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